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Shipped/Unshipped for Me
People who say that Kickstarter is rife with scams might be right about a few projects but I think that the people who operate that site keep it pretty legit. My own personal history wtih the site (and, yeah, I realize this is going to reveal a lot about me but I don't really care) is that I have received:

Nature of Code book PDFs (plan on doing a review of it after holidays)

Two old forgotten sci-fi books (from Singularity & Co)

Three separate physical magazines on special interests

Four CD albums by new artists

20 of the same Rmashackle Glory vinyl album (don't ask)

Several T-shirts like fangamer's kickstarter

FTL (RTS game)

Now, that said, I'm still waiting on three or four video games to be released like Grandroids, NASA's Astronaut game, Kitaru and, of course, the OUYA console. I'm also waiting on a movie that is well overdue (although the dude running it is very responsive and was clearly in over his head), playing cards, a new cartoon from Ren & Stimpy's creator, a board game called "The New Science" (which I might also try to review for Slashdot) and another DVD/CD combo and T-shirt which were very recent so it's not a big deal.

Now, I've only put money in here that I didn't really care about. Yeah, it adds up to real cash but I've been quite happy with all of the things I've gotten out of this and super excited about the future projects. I agreed that the facebook glasses sound like a scam [slashdot.org] but I was really disheartened when people called the OCULUS a scam [slashdot.org]. Nobody seems to be covering Zeyez's engineering updates [kickstarter.com] and all the comments are just that it's still a scam and they want their money back.

So why is there there so much negativity associated with Kickstarter? My experience has been largely positive although I would have thought I would be seeing the NASA game sooner (the other funding didn't hit until November of 2012) and I thought I would be watching "Flood Tide" by now. Aside from that, my experience has been largely positive. Do people have negative stories where they've been screwed or cheated or lied to on Kickstarter?

The negativity surrounding KickStarter is based on a number of things.

1. project issuesa. There are scam projects. Period. Sometimes they're easily outed, other times you won't know it's a scam until it's well over with.b. A lot of projects - especially in technology/design (and why these are 2 separate categories is beyond everyone - the overlap is ridiculous) - do not deliver on the estimated shipping date. KickStarter themselves acknowledged this and made everybody using those categories add a 'risks' explanation in which the project creator will explain what difficulties a project may face and how they believe they can overcome these difficulties.c. Some projects, delivered on time or not, don't deliver what was promised or do deliver what was promised but then the 'thing' falls apart or is otherwise not particularly useful. Think an iPhone holder using a suction cup that fails to keep suction. A fire piston that leaks and fails to ignite the material (fabrication issue, manufacturer has taken responsibility after the creator informed them of the issue, so backers will get a good one). A colorful iDevice cable that is rendered obsolete by the new design (yes, they pledged for the old connector design... more than a year ago before anybody even knew Apple would change things around, but deliver is after that change.d. Some projects just don't deliver. You already mentioned Zeyez.. that one remains to be seen. But then there's projects like Hanfree. Its creator eventually had to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after some backers went to the courts out of principle - the guy received tens of thousands of dollars, then apparently mismanaged those funds (what they were hoping to find out through the case).

And in 'd' lies a bigger issue, along with 'a'.2. KickStarter's responsibilitya. KickStarter doesn't really vet projects. They have gotten better about this - demanding prototypes in design/technology and all that, but once live they are very hands-off.b. If it turns out to be a scam, or the creator fails to deliver, KickStarter tells backers their issue is with the creator and they can go pursue legal matters but leave KickStarter out of it (in a recent case, KickStarter was actually named - this was covered at Slashdot).c. KickStarter - and amazon - still take a chunk of the funds. On paper they're doing some tricky business where - supposedly - legally the funds they receive is separate from the funds pledged to the creator. But common sense says that KickStarter benefits financially - on an individual case - from scam projects. In the long run, it might hurt their platform which reduces revenue overall, but purely for an individual project.. they already got their chunk of money and are keeping it well out of the hands of backers seeking to get their money back.

C. Ambiguity of KickStarter as a platformSimply put.. is KickStarter a (pre-order) store, or not?Legally, it might be. Others believe you're investing (you're not - no dividends, shares, etc.). Others see it somewhere in between. This ambiguity - and with it more questions than answers, rights-wise.

Now, you asked about personal experiences.. pretty sure I posted about this before, but basically.. so far most projects have delivered, albeit late, and the delivered projects have been pretty much as expected or better.That said, just today one of the projects I backed seems to have delivered the product to pre-sales outside of the KickStarter backers before the vast majority of KickStarter backers received the product themselves. That's disappointing. Of course the pre-sales people paid a good chunk more and didn't get to 'experience' the KickStarter development process, but it does feel like slighting the backers in a way. I would certainly recommend to any KickStarter project creator that they fulfill their KickStarter obligations first.

I think the only real problem is in your "C", and not through any fault of Kickstarter's. I'm not sure when people lost all their brain cells, but it has always been a crowdfunding site, not a store.

I don't know about everyone else, but to me that says, "You're funding a proposed project. That means it may fail. Do not expect to donate $5 and get the cure for cancer shipped to your doorstep by 3pm tomorrow. Make good decisions with your money." And for those that are too dense to infer that, Kickstarter spells it out.

But as with most things, people just up-and-decide that they want goodies without risk. And that's not to say Kickstarter shouldn't police (as best they can) for outright scams... but there's no logical reason they should be on the hook for failed or behind-schedule projects.

All of this throws all the issues surrounding crowdfunding for equity into sharp relief. You'd think people would understand that "risk" means "might not be good for you". Unfortunately it sometimes looks like people really do want to be protected from themselves.

I think you meant 2c, though, from the "there's no logical reason they should be on the hook for failed or behind-schedule projects".

That depends on how you look at it (though, legally, it doesn't depend on that at all, of course).

If you consider KickStarter to be a store with pre-sales (and for some projects this is actually pretty close to the truth as they have finished products but need to bump up to mass production, for example), then you pa

KickStarter would benefit greatly from greater transparency on this matter.

I'm all for transparency, but I don't see a deficiency here.

Perhaps it really is just me, but I've never been under the impression that Kickstarter is a store or that they've ever been dishonest or even unclear about that. In fact, they go to some annoying lengths to remind people of that, and I don't know why anyone would still, honestly, think that they are. Now if you said people will occasionally say they

I called Kickstarter on my blog [livejournal.com] (I know, I'm going to start calling myself a futurist soon). When Kickstarter popped up, it was almost exactly as I'd thought of it, with one key difference - and I think they're really going to have to address that difference as investment ramps up and confidence in their brand name becomes more important.

In my model, I assumed that the crowd-sourcing service would also act as escrow - that they'd release funds as-needed to projects, instead of handing it over in one lump sum. The project owner would have to specify milestones and demonstrate completion before they could access the rest of the cash. Now, obviously, with small projects gaining only a couple of grand, that's probably not going to fly, but with million-dollar projects becoming ever more common, I think either Kickstarter is going to have to start adopting that sort of model, or someone else will, and will eat their lunch.

Joking aside, the problem with escrow in a situation like this is that it's extremely difficult, maybe even impossible to do. Trying to arbitrate over milestone descriptions is hard. Trying to do it for a bajillion projects with an equal number of people writing the proposals is even harder.

At the very least, Kickstarter would have to seriously ramp up their percentage (they get 5% and the rest goes to Amazon for payment proces

Good point. Perhaps the opportunity is for another company to act as a *standard* escrow manager and overseer for those projects that want it. Then, the project team can advertise that in their kickstarter promotion. If it's obvious that their project should use such a service, then they might attract more investors by committing to doing that.

Sorry, but that wont be possible. From the faq:
"Kickstarter is for projects that can be completed, not things that require maintenance to exist. This means no e-commerce sites, web businesses, or social networking sites. (Yes, this means Kickstarter wouldn’t be allowed on Kickstarter. Funny, but true.)"

At the very least, Kickstarter would have to seriously ramp up their percentage (they get 5% and the rest goes to Amazon for payment processing)

Bear in mind, Kickstarter's service is essentially uniform across all projects - they don't provide more for a $3 million project than they do for a $1k one. 5% of $3 million is a big chunk of change. At the moment, Kickstarter is pocketing the lot.

Now, I've got no complaints about that - they're providing a valuable service, and now they're getting the dividends - but it's not like they're running on razor-slim margins on those projects anyway. If they only required escrow for projects which received over

Which is precisely why someone needs to write an AI engine like IBMs Watson, (hell make it a KickStarter Project) to make the value judgements fairly and quickly and take the process out of human hands altogether. That, and they can turn around and sell the application to Texas to handle that back log of capital cases heading to the Green Mile.

I hate that wiki page, it's bad (but I also hate wikipedia culture, so I'm not going to endure the frustration of trying to fix it). Artistshare was a simple fundraising site, it did not have the threshold pledge mechanism. As such, every charity in the world has prior art.

The first website which offered threshold pledge financing was Fundable.org by John Pratt. No relation to the fundraising site which is at that address today. Kickstarter (which knew about Fundable) improved on Pratt's model by strictly a

Sorta like the non-profit model used by HopeVault.org [hopevault.org]? Funding by phases of project with proof of milestones and release of funds based on donors voting and approving demonstration of work.

Wasting my mod points, but by the time you proposed it in 2008, fundable.org had been running for two years with the same threshold pledge system. (They were hit bad by credit card scammers, accidentally axed a legit project thinking it was CC fraud, this happened to be Mary Robinette Kowal, SF author and friends with Cory Doctorow, at the time the most popular blogger in the world. End of story).

Meh, I never really thought I'd be the only one. I consider crowdfunding an idea whose time has come - and you know what they say about those. It's just one of those amusing coincidences that crop up from time to time. Incidentally, I agree with you about the value of ideas, which is why it's am amusing anecdote to me, and not the great tragedy of my life.

I couldn't find much about fundable with a quick googling - their site seems to be some SEO trap, and the fundable in Wikipedia talks about an entity crea

The negativity surrounding KickStarter is based on a number of things.

1. project issues
a. There are scam projects. Period. Sometimes they're easily outed, other times you won't know it's a scam until it's well over with.
b. A lot of projects - especially in technology/design (and why these are 2 separate categories is beyond everyone - the overlap is ridiculous) - do not deliver on the estimated shipping date. KickStarter themselves acknowledged this and made everybody using those categories add a 'risks' explanation in which the project creator will explain what difficulties a project may face and how they believe they can overcome these difficulties.
c. Some projects, delivered on time or not, don't deliver what was promised or do deliver what was promised but then the 'thing' falls apart or is otherwise not particularly useful. Think an iPhone holder using a suction cup that fails to keep suction. A fire piston that leaks and fails to ignite the material (fabrication issue, manufacturer has taken responsibility after the creator informed them of the issue, so backers will get a good one). A colorful iDevice cable that is rendered obsolete by the new design (yes, they pledged for the old connector design... more than a year ago before anybody even knew Apple would change things around, but deliver is after that change.
d. Some projects just don't deliver. You already mentioned Zeyez.. that one remains to be seen. But then there's projects like Hanfree. Its creator eventually had to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy after some backers went to the courts out of principle - the guy received tens of thousands of dollars, then apparently mismanaged those funds (what they were hoping to find out through the case).

And in 'd' lies a bigger issue, along with 'a'.

Sounds like Kickstarter should require that projects:
1. put funds into an escrow account,
2. receive payments from that escrow account after meeting certain milestones

There would certainly need to be variance based on projects since some projects may require more at different phases - cost for materials for R&D, then later manufacturering, vs. software development vs creating a movie or recording a CD. But they could easily do that, and even allow the backers to have at least a partial say in when t

I think your 2c is not really an issue. Kickstarter's name and reputation is the only valuable asset they have, because just about anybody could stand up a clone. It's in their best interests to make sure that there is no appearance of impropriety in any of their dealings, or people will abandon their site faster than you can kick start a Harley-Davidson on a cold day.

If they're truly willing to spend their reputation for a few quick bucks made off of honest people getting screwed, they're a lot closer to

I *still* do not understand what an Ouya is going to be good for that cannot be done by buying an Android tablet with an HDMI port.

And a controller. And a platform publishers can readily take advantage of. And all that in a single box that could be laying around at Walmart the same way that a Roku is laying around there and kicking the pants off of most suggestions regarding generic NAS that people can then add an IR dongle for and then buy a separate remote to operate, etc.

Code Hero was a scam from the start. The guy in charge of the project previously ran a scam where he sold corsets online, hapily taking money but failing to fill the actual orders.

Code Hero's description should have set off a major red flag. It's software designed to teach people to program -- and it's being developed in Unity? WTF? Reminds me of the old saying: "Those who can do; those who can't, teach."

It's sad to see people getting duped, but on the other hand they should have done their research fir

Code Hero is still in progress, the dude recently responded and mentioned a new alpha soon. But more importantly, why does Unity deserve a WTF?

I've coded my own 2d engines from scratch and dabbled in 3d in the early Direct X 5-6 days but for the past few years I've been using Unity. There's no sense in recreating the wheel every time, you are just wasting time coding the same logic again and again (how to load a file, read in a bitmap...), so exactly why do you think using a well planned and executed 3d

A few months ago, Offbeatr [wikipedia.org] launched as "the Kickstarter of porn". Since then, five projects have been funded - over $60,000 pledged in total - and it's all for furry projects [flayrah.com].
Will they all ship? It's too early to say, but the fact that these project creators have track records is part of the reason they're being funded in the first place.

That is similar (but not identical) to an idea I've batted around for the better part of a decade:

Bounty-Porn.

The public determines who it would like to see do hard core porn and pools all their money. Then a representative approaches the people the public wants to see do porn and offers them the ridiculous amount of money in exchange for doing it and the directors and producers and distributors take a small cut off the top.

Think of it. If every person who wants to see Scarlet Johansen do porn chipped in ten bucks, it might be hard to turn down that half billion dollars for a few days of work.:)

to flip it, people could post their own profiles to your bounty-porn site and offer to perform when their goal amount is met. Then everyone who contributed gets a vid, behind the scenes, props, etc...depending on contribution levels.

I'm still kinda wondering how the clamshell case will support the iPad 4th gen.. which, to my knowledge, isnt for sale yet? Since.. Mini != 4th gen. Plus, does not appear the mini would fit in the clamshell, and there are no pictures of the mini in the clamshell, or any mention of an insert

Most projects when they list on Kickstarter are already well advanced. Depending on the type of project, they've probably already made pilots/mockups/prototypes, done their own market research, looked into manufacturing costs, etc. There's also not enough datra released on a Kickstarter prospectus to really give anyone else a really big edge.

People with big funding wouldn't race to market anyway - they'd clone the project after it's released, then out-market the original.

'm waiting for venture capital to start cherry picking ideas from Kickstarter and racing them to market

This happens anywhere, really. There's a few crowdfunding/crowdsourcing websites that actually work exactly that way but keeping the idea-generating people in on it (quirky comes to mind).

There's not so much 'racing', though, as there is VCs going "that's cool, we should invest in that" and then end up approaching the project creator (translusense, for example - http://www.translusense.com/ [translusense.com]) and striking

"Shouldn't we be glad to have Venture Capitalists cut out of the loop so that companies actually listen to us?"

I like the concept of Kickstarter, and have donated to one of the projects over there myself, but nobody should go into it thinking it makes them anything more than what they already were to the company: a customer with a potentially open wallet. One could argue that you don't even have influence on the company, because they've already decided what they're going to try to bring to market; your only

"Shouldn't we be glad to have Venture Capitalists cut out of the loop so that companies actually listen to us?"

They aren't the same, but they don't have to be for that statement to be true. Kickstarter projects do have to listen to backers to some degree, or they won't get them. Now, there's a lot less control than the VC relationship, but there's also a lot less commitment from the backer too. My interest in this whole model is it's potential long-term effect on copyright issues - if creators are paid for their work before it's produced, then copyright as a model for providing income starts to become unnecessary.

It doesn't state anything about scams - in part because it's difficult to determine if something is a scam (never intended to deliver) or the project just failed (intended to deliver, but couldn't, because [reason]).

The big ones relevant here:

Only 25% of projects delivered on time!According to Prof. Mollickâ(TM)s model, after 8 months of delay, 75% of finished products (as opposed to give-aways like t-s

We had 2 levels of rewards shipping, half within 2 weeks, the other half the next month. We did end up shipping the last several September rewards on October 1st, so technically we slipped 1 day for small group of rewards. Otherwise, all the September rewards actually shipped in September, and the rest shipped before the end of October.

Of course, a tiny number of backers didn't respond with their address or had other logistical problems with their info. Most of those shipped late, but even then, we resolved nearly all of them in October.

I think this is an excellent example of the difference between a good kickstarter campaign, and a bad one. This guy with his Teensy3 had developed a product, finished the design, and basically knew what needed to happen; cash to mass produce a working product. In short, the ideal kickstarter project. This is what people need to look for if they are going to fund projects, vs funding people who get on kickstarter and say something like 'I have this fantastic plan for a revolutionary new display made of laser

I've supported one Kickstarter because it was a photography project by a friend who is a professional photographer, i.e. he's been published in Time magazine. I supported it because it was a thoughtful project with a timeline and real deadlines. Once the funding was met and he started the project, he gave status updates every few days and completed the project on time. I was happy to participate.

Every other offer that's been solicited by friends I've turned down. The most recent one, which did get fundin

kickstarter still reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/678/ [xkcd.com]
i do agree with you though, you wonder about a lot of kickstarters being "I can't convince any bank to give me a loan because my business model is crap, so I'll ask the internet for money"

The notion that venture capitalists are somehow "in the way" here is highly specious.

The simple fact is that no one on Kickstarter is there for any reason other than "we want your money because no one else would give us any."

This can be new start-ups with more dreams than schemes, venture capital won't touch them because they have zero experience in doing what they are doing. The idea that "I've never done it, but how hard could it be?" should -and does- raise alarm bells among the sensible.

Kickstarter is better for businesses because they can raise money without incurring debt or selling equity. The consumer takes the initial risk AND pays for the end product. Back in the good old days, if I invested money in a successful business I would get equity or interest income in return. Now I get a poster.

I think the idea of Kickstarter is not a 'preorder store', but is in fact a 'Everyone can be a venture capitalist!' website. You agree to give someone money, and *IF* their product/company succeeds, you get something out of it. in the case of Kickstarter, instead of 10% of the next 5 years profits or whatever, you get 1 or 2 of the product, and maybe your name on a shirt or something. Less risk, less reward, but essentially venture capitalism for the masses.
If that idea does not appeal to you, (that is t

Less risk, less reward, but essentially venture capitalism for the masses.

Actually it's much more risk with much less reward. Try this: "invest" $5,000 in 5 kickstarter projects, and $5,000 in 5 IPOs. Compare the return on investment after two years. "Venture capitalism for the masses" is called the stock market. Kickstarter is designed to fool consumers into giving away money for free by dangling shiny objects in front of them.

Yeah, the thing is, I'm NOT going to invest 5000$ in 5 kickstarter projects. Most people are going to invest say, 50-100$ per project, tops, (yes, there are far larger investment points, but a lot of those go un-filled from what i've seen). investing 50$ in a normal IPO is going to be mostly a waste of time. personally, I don't feel that 'The Masses' should be dabbling in the stock market, but thats a discussion for another time.

It's all about reputation. I backed Tim Schafer's adventure game because he has proven himself and everybody trusts him.

If someone is unknown, then the risk is higher and you should treat it as casino bet: you must assume the money will be lost, but if you're wrong, then it'll be a welcome surprise!

Kickstarter should also return their 5% fee on no-delivery projects so that their interests are aligned with the backers. A 5 cents on the dollar refund (minus transaction fees) is negligible while the company wa

but you got a freaking Bluetooth keyboard. That hardly says anything about kickstarter hardware products. There are literally hundreds of these, and a good portion of these are already compatible with the ipad. There is no risk, no innovation, nothing. Heck if you want my opinion I'd say you got scammed because you funded the reinvention of the wheel.
BTW, if you needed a keyboard you should have got a freaking laptop. If you really want a tablet and touch interfaces there are the ASUS Trasformer series wh

People are against crowdsourcing(at least the model espoused by kickstarter) because it's essentially a charity for people who want to be rich. There's nothing wrong with putting your money there if you have the cash and want to feel good about bringing a product to market, but in the end the ROI is pretty much nil, your legal recourse for anything but blatant fraud is non existent. It works, and will continue to work, but it's about people who have money to burn making themselves feel good which isn't nece

I developed software for a one-click process to make your house a green home, calculating the sweet spots in tens of thousands of combinations of energy efficiency retrofits for your house, identifying which incentives you qualify for and filling out the paperwork for you, finding qualified contractors in your area to do the work, and connecting you to green lenders if you need it. Built the prototype without a dime in investment or savings. Then I submitted the project to Kickstarter to raise capital to

Yep, I likewise was wondering from the title what sort of ship the technology was projecting, and what it was projected onto, and mostly, why projecting something was new technology, seemed like projectors had been around for a while?